Student charged with grooming and blackmailing young girls

A Court Reporter

A St Andrews University student has been accused of blackmailing young girls across Britain into sending him sexually explicit images and videos.

Glen Wilson faces a total of 49 charges relating to the grooming of children as young as 12 and coercing them to perform sex acts on camera for him.

The charges against Wilson - which run to 10 pages in total - allege he used extortion to force eight girls into carrying on sending him sexual material.

It is alleged Wilson groomed the girls after finding them online and then told them he would post graphic images of them to their parents and friends and on social media.

He is accused of making threats to expose the girls to their peers if they did not continue sending him sexually explicit images.

Wilson - who was not present in court because he was sitting an exam in St Andrews - denies all 49 charges libelled against him.

The 18-year-old, from Agnes Blackadder Hall, St Andrews, denies targeting children from as far afield as London, Wales, Sheffield, Derby and Glasgow.

It is alleged he carried out the offences against three 12-year-olds, two 13-year-old, two 14-year-olds and a 15-year-old girl between September 10 2015 and June 14 last year.

The offences are alleged to have taken place at Wilson’s family home, a seven-bedroom country mansion in Longforgan which was recently on the market for £1.25 million.

Wilson denies sending sexually explicit messages and images of himself, and inducing the girls to send back images of them while engaged in sexual activity.

He is alleged to have coerced the girls, with the intention of menacing them and putting them in a state of alarm and apprehension, by telling them he would forward sexual material featuring them to their parents.

He allegedly said he would also post the material to their friends and publish it on the internet unless they sent further indecent images and videos to him.

One of the charges against Wilson alleges that he got one of the 12-year-old girls to carry out a sex act on Skype, while it was being viewed by others.

Fiscal depute John Malpass told Perth Sheriff Court: “The accused is sitting an exam at university today and the Crown gave an undertaking not to seek a warrant.

“There are eight child witnesses from various parts of the country and if the facts and circumstances cannot be agreed it will be a major operation to have remote sites identified in England and Wales for them to give evidence, and to timetable it accordingly.”

The case was set down for trial in August and Wilson had bail continued.